Globalisation and complex Europeanisation are two significant challenges currently influencing the restructure of the European nation-state, and redefining political power.

For this volume, first-rate European scholars look at the consequences of these and other challenges faced by European societies.

Contributions revisit traditional objects of political science – state sovereignty, civil society and citizenship – mixing sophisticated empirical analyses with methodological and conceptual innovations including field theory, multiple correspondence analysis, and the study of space sets.

Combining qualitative and quantitative research techniques, and macro- and micro-levels, chapters have in common a contextual analysis of politics through scrutiny of configurations of groups, representations and perceptions.

A transnational perspective is the common thread linking every study in this volume, which seeks to avoid methodological nationalism.

'Social science considerations of Europe and European integration have been colonised by 'new institutionalisms,' whether the rational choice version that mimics economics or the alternative 'historical' variety, both rooted in Anglophone debates. Political sociology has been relatively absent, alas, partly because sociology has been fragmented by national concerns and multiple social problem orientations.

A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe is a splendid launching pad for the intellectual game change that is needed. The book brings together an all-star international cast of political sociologists who present refreshing and different approaches that elucidate much about today's unprecedented crisis conditions in Europe. In practically every essay we learn that the world of politics is much more than national institutions, and that analysing it demands much more than national state-centered theories and methods can give us.'
George Ross, ad personam Jean Monnet Chair, Université de Montréal; Morris Hillquit Professor emeritus, Brandeis University; Faculty associate, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University